Serial Killer Z: Shadows

by Philip Harris

  Serial Killer Z: Shadows

  Philip Harris

  Contents

  1. Crash

  2. Shadowless

  3. Flying Home

  4. The Three

  5. Faraday’s Camp

  6. That’s How It Goes

  7. Breakfast

  8. Blood and Water

  9. Siren

  10. Fitch

  11. Guardian Angel

  12. The City

  13. Home Sweet Home

  14. An Old Friend

  15. Dinner

  16. and a Show

  17. Red Blood Redux

  18. Kindred Spirit

  19. Ph2

  20. Surprises

  21. Familiar Faces

  22. Research

  23. The Club

  24. Monstro

  25. Zee Time

  26. New Friends

  27. Olivia Rising

  28. Cracks

  29. Threads

  30. A Visitor

  31. Confrontation

  32. Yaletown

  33. The Tunnel

  34. Swarmed

  35. O-Three

  36. Subjects

  37. Reunited

  38. The Chained

  39. Unlocking Darkness

  40. Defeat

  41. Gunfire

  42. Checkpoint

  43. Bitten

  44. Jon

  45. Après Kill

  46. Things Fall Apart

  47. Plan B

  48. Cold Black

  49. Plans

  50. Ocean

  Read How it All Began

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Also by Philip Harris

  Chapter 1

  Crash

  I slammed on the brakes but hit the zombie anyway. The motorcycle’s back wheel locked, and the tail end snaked across the asphalt. The rear wheel caught the half-decayed creature in the hip and sent it sprawling across the ground. The bike tipped. I jammed my foot against the ground in an effort to stay upright. I almost succeeded. Then the front wheel slipped on a loose patch of gravel, and the bike went down.

  I’d managed to scrub enough speed that the fall didn’t shred my jeans, but it still hurt like hell. I hit the ground and rolled. Agony lit up the side of my leg. My elbow slammed into the road, and a piercing bolt of pain shot up my arm and into my shoulder. I tumbled a few feet then slid to a stop. The bike bounced and shuddered away from me, trailing sparks and chunks of broken plastic.

  I lay on the ground, assessing my injuries. The fall had snapped my head sideways, and my neck was already aching. I could taste blood in my mouth. My arms and legs were twisted awkwardly. When I moved my right arm, a jagged pulse of pain shot through my shoulder. I flexed my fingers and moved my feet. Nothing seemed to be broken.

  The same couldn’t be said of the motorcycle. There were gouges in the asphalt where it had spun in a graceful arc before coming to a stop at the side of the road. Its handlebars were twisted. One of the brake levers had snapped off. The now dented exhaust dangled limply from the side of the chassis. The engine coughed and spluttered then died.

  I let my head drop to the pavement and listened to the gentle ticking of cooling metal until I heard a low moan.

  The zombie.

  It took me a few seconds to find it. The collision had knocked the creature to the side of the road and just out of sight. Now it was dragging itself toward me across the blacktop. Bone jutted from its pelvis. Its right leg was twisted at an impossible angle. The lower half flopped uselessly as it pushed itself along the ground. The creature’s face was a mass of sagging, rotting flesh. It opened its mouth, and a stream of black fluid oozed over its chin.

  Wincing at the pain in my leg, I forced myself back to my feet. My battered limbs grumbled. I ignored them. The zombie raised its head. The black orbs of its eyes locked onto me. It let out another groan. Moving of its own accord, my hand reached for the knife on my belt, but the sheath was gone.

  There was no panic in my movements as I searched for my weapon. Over the last few months, I’d faced hundreds of zombies. I’d survived a swarm that had taken down an experienced military team, escaped a town overrun by the dead, and killed dozens of individual zombies. Despite the crash, nothing about this situation suggested things were going to turn out badly for me this time.

  I limped across the road, more concerned about my leg than the creature relentlessly hauling itself toward me. The pain in my leg was growing more intense by the second, and I was beginning to doubt my initial assessment. My ankle might be broken after all, or at least fractured.

  The motorcycle’s front wheel was still spinning when I reached it. Up close, I could see even more damage. The front forks were twisted, and oil dripped beneath the engine. The smell of spilled fuel tinged the air. I kicked aside the debris scattered around the bike and found the broken brake lever but no knife.

  The zombie behind me groaned again. A purple, misshapen tongue writhed inside its mouth like some bizarre Amazonian slug. There was a rope noose around the thing’s neck. The red nylon was smeared with black blood where it had shredded the zombie’s flesh.

  I let the zombie continue its crawl toward me, watching. The sight of it dragging itself across the road, relentless in its search for meat, brought back memories of my cave and of similar zombies strapped into cages or chained to tables. It brought back memories of the tools of my trade: my scalpels.

  The anger I’d felt when I’d discovered that someone had violated my sanctuary and stolen the toolkit containing the scalpels had faded to a dull throb, but it still fueled me. The thief had left me a message calling me back to the city. As if the theft wasn’t enough, they’d used my real name—Edward.

  I picked up the broken brake lever. One end was shaped like a ball. The other ended in a ragged point where the metal had snapped. I slipped the lever between my fingers and gripped the ball in the palm of my hand. It was a far cry from the precision of my usual tools, but it would have to do. The thought of my lost toolkit triggered a dull, empty feeling inside me, but I pushed it away.

  The zombie snapped at me as I approached it. A thick black trail stretched behind it like the thing was some human/slug hybrid. It reached out to me, grabbing at my leg. I stamped a boot down on its wrist. Bone splintered. I stood over the zombie, the lever gripped in my hand, and prepared to let my true self loose. I searched the crevices of my mind for that essential fragment of my soul that I call the shadow.

  There was nothing there.

  The zombie at my feet groaned. I felt fingers wrap around my ankle. I was dimly aware of pain radiating up my leg, but it was distant as though it was happening to someone else. Something moved off to my right in the trees that lined the road, but I dismissed it, too.

  I gripped the lever tighter and again reached for the shadow, feeding the search with a touch of desperation. I was rewarded with a twisted, sick feeling and an increasing sense of dread. I hadn’t felt the shadow since I’d discovered the message in my cave.

  Realization hit me like a shot to the gut.

  The shadow was gone.

  My stomach twisted. I doubled over, staggering away from the zombie. Whoever had taken my scalpels had robbed me of the one thing that had kept me grounded since I was a child.

  The lever fell from my grip and clattered to the ground. An icy chill settled over me, accompanied by a bitter sense of loss. Without the shadow, I was nothing.

  A low, rumbling growl came to me across the road. A second zombie appeared from out of the trees and tottered toward me.

  I ignored it. I was too overwhelmed by my grief to care.

  Again, I reached for the shadow, heedless of the conseq
uences of giving it free rein. This time, I wanted it to drown out my thinking, feeling self. I wanted it to overwhelm my normal instincts. It didn’t matter that I’d become so focused on the kill that I’d leave myself exposed to whatever dangers wandered the forest. I wanted to lose myself to the shadow.

  No.

  I needed to lose myself to it.

  I closed my eyes and willed it to come to me.

  Nothing.

  Branches snapped and another zombie lumbered into view. There were more, too. At least half a dozen of the dead were scattered throughout the forest. Farther down the road, a cluster of four zombies were staggering up the hill toward me.

  Finally, my instinct for self-preservation kicked in. I whirled around, searching for a way out and seeing only the approaching dead. I scanned the ground, looking for the knife. A strip of brown leather across the opposite side of the road caught my eye for a moment, but it was part of the bike’s saddle.

  One of the zombies, a woman wearing a life vest, staggered onto the road. There was a deep gash in the top of its head and blood had stained the left side of the vest black. I found the broken brake lever again and picked it up.

  I turned slowly around, still hoping to find a way out, but most of the zombies had seen me. Even those that hadn’t were in my way. I briefly considered the fact that my death at the hands of this swarm would make the loss of the shadow irrelevant, then lunged toward the woman.

  Chapter 2

  Shadowless

  Months of living among the dead had made me a survivor. The lever arced through the air and crunched into the side of the zombie’s head. Its legs buckled and the zombie went down. As it fell, the lever popped free of its skull bringing a stream of grayish matter with it. I stared down at the woman’s now utterly lifeless body. In the past, this would have been the point where the shadow made its presence felt. I’d have been trying to suppress it, not draw it out.

  This time, I felt nothing.

  The bitter stench of rotting flesh rolled over me, carried on the wind. Instinctively, I spun, swinging the lever through the air.

  There were no zombies nearby, but one had reached the side of the road—an old man, liver-spotted skin torn and flaking. It moved with a herky-jerky motion, arms and legs twitching as it crept toward me. It was an easy kill.

  I charged across the road and drove the lever up into its jaw. Blood splashed across my face as I pulled my weapon free again. The zombie didn’t go down. It grabbed my neck and squeezed, but its grip was weak. Half of its fingers weren’t even working.

  I slammed my fists down on the zombie’s arms and knocked them lose. The zombie leaned forward, jaw gaping. I thrust the lever into its face. The tip skidded off bone, sinking into its eye. The zombie twitched as I shoved it away. It fell over backward. Its head slammed into the road and split like a balloon filled with offal. I felt a flicker of something deep within me—the shadow returning, perhaps. My heart quickened. Then the feeling was gone again.

  The zombie I’d hit with the motorcycle was still crawling toward me. I ran to it and kicked the side of its head. Bone snapped and cracked. The creature slumped to the road.

  There were still too many zombies. Shapes moved through the trees—more zombies on the way. I considered trying the motorcycle, but the lake of fluid spreading around it showed how hopeless that idea was. I caught a hint of gasoline beneath the decay that filled the air.

  Then it was gone and another zombie lunged at me.

  Ducking, I swept my leg toward it. My foot caught the creature behind the knee. It stumbled but didn’t go down. The zombie was shorter than me, and thin—a teenager maybe. I kicked again. Anger and frustration lent extra weight to the blow. This time, the zombie’s leg crumpled. I drove the lever into the side of its skull before it hit the ground. Black blood coated my hand. The brake lever almost slipped from my grip.

  My heart was pounding. Three days of riding had sapped my strength. Fatigue was already setting in. My breaths came in ragged gasps. I spun slowly around and counted sixteen zombies before I gave up. Most were still coming out of the trees but two more had joined the four on the road.

  I caught the scent of fuel again. Matches. If I had matches or a lighter, then maybe I could burn some of the dead closing in on me. Maybe even cause a big enough explosion to make space for me to escape. I patted the pockets of my jacket, knowing full well that there were no matches or lighters in there.

  A young woman with thick red hair reached for me. I twisted sideways, let the zombie’s momentum carry it forward, then jabbed the lever into the back of its head. It crashed into the road with a wet thud. I had the sudden urge to ask if it was a smoker.

  Two more zombies were approaching across the road, but I had time to kneel and check the pockets of the woman’s voluminous jacket. The right side was empty but I felt a hard tube in the left—a lighter.

  The zombies’ moans grew louder as I reached inside the jacket pocket. My fingers wrapped around plastic, and I pulled the lighter free.

  A bitter laugh welled up inside me. The ‘lighter’ was a vaporizer. The laughter turned to despair. How could the shadow have left me, just when I needed it most? I needed the clarity it brought to get me out of this, its focus. I clicked the vaporizer on and off, hoping for a spark, then threw it at the nearest zombie.

  Fighting down the urge to curl up into a ball and let the dead take me, I ran up the road toward the point where the swarm was the thinnest.

  There were five zombies on the road between me and freedom. The first one went down easily enough, but as I pulled my makeshift weapon free, my grip slipped. I dropped the lever.

  Another zombie, a foul-smelling man in a thick flannel shirt, grabbed at me. Its fingers brushed my shoulder as I lunged for the fallen lever. My fingers wrapped around it. The zombie’s body slammed into me.

  I hit the ground and pain roared up my injured leg. Crying out, I tried to roll out of the way. The flannel-shirted zombie landed on top of me. Fear ignited my movements, and I jammed the lever into the side of its head. The point pierced its skull, and thick black blood laced with yellow pus flowed over my hand.

  The zombie’s teeth clacked together an inch from my face. Foul breath washed over me. It was so close, I could see the pockmarks across its cheeks, the faint outline of a scar on its chin.

  I yanked the lever free and tried again. The point tore through the zombie’s neck. I twisted the lever. It dug into the creature’s spine. A thick, almost gelatinous gargling sound came from the zombie’s mouth, accompanied by a torrent of more of the sticky pus. I turned my face away as viscous fluid spattered my jacket.

  The zombie went limp.

  I couldn’t see the others, but shuffling feet and eager moans told me they were close. I wedged my hands under the body pinning me to the ground, levered myself free and found myself kneeling, supplicant-like, at the feet of another zombie. I plunged the brake lever into the nearest soft spot I could find—its calf—then scrambled away and pushed myself to my feet.

  Like some creature in a Greek myth, two more zombies had sprung up to replace the one I’d taken down. More were closing in behind me. I’d seen swarms before, one with well over a hundred walking corpses in it, but I’d always avoided getting this close.

  My leg was screaming in agony. The world kept shifting on its axis. I jabbed the lever at the nearest zombie. The tip pierced its throat. I leaned into the blow, forcing my weapon up and in to the thing’s skull. It twitched and flailed. I let out a cry of frustration as pain rippled up my leg. The zombie backhanded me across the jaw and set my head ringing, but it was a mindless reflex, a final spasm as unlife left its reanimated body.

  More sounds from behind me—an animalistic growl, a rasping breath. I spun and used the lever to take down an old woman in a mud-covered shawl. The zombie fell to the ground, only to be replaced by a short, bare-chested zombie with dark purple bruises beneath its eyes and a massive hole where its lungs should have been. Despite the zomb
ie’s injuries, it took three blows to finally put it to rest.

  Half a dozen more steps up the road took me to another zombie, one whose face was too mangled to determine its sex. The lever curved through the air, leaving an arc of black blood in its wake. The zombie fell. When it landed, a cloud of flies rose into the air from the back of its head.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder. I twisted, stabbed, retreated. The air was heavy with the stench of decay and the dull moaning of the dead.

  Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I ran. I shoulder charged one zombie, knocking it aside, only to have yet another rise up in front of me. I kept running, careening off it and into the path of another of the creatures. After a halfhearted attempt at stabbing it with the lever, I dodged sideways.

  Where there had been five zombies a few seconds ago, now there were at least ten. Dozens of their brethren were converging on me from the trees. There was no time for fight, only flight.

  A female zombie with a broken nose and long, black hair grabbed for me. I’d barely had time to remove the lever from its skull when a pair of men in matching yellow raincoats loomed up in front of me, hands grasping. One missed; the other’s fingers clamped around my wrist and pulled me toward its waiting jaws. I yanked myself free and turned toward the trees. Maybe I could get into the forest where the undergrowth would make it harder for them to follow me.